In case you missed it, last week we launched a family of isolated gate drivers specifically for power supply designs. The new Si827x ISOdriver family builds on our reputation in digital isolation and offers the highest noise immunity on the market.

Power per volume is the primary metric for power supply designers and in order to maximize power density it’s sometimes necessary to choose faster switching frequencies for modulation schemes. Power delivery systems use high-power semiconductor switches, such as silicon-based MOSFETs and new gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC)-based MOSFETs, requiring a high-current isolated driver to control the switch. This improves system efficiencies but also produces higher noise transients that can cause signal loss or permanent damage from latch-up. The Si827x gate drivers protect power systems by offering exceptional immunity to these noise transients caused by high-speed switching.

The new drivers feature an EN (active high enable) pin instead of the typical DIS (active low) pin, under-voltage lockout (UVLO) fault protection, a de-glitch feature for filtering noisy inputs and highly precise dead time (DT pin) programmability. Using this DT feature, developers can precisely control the “dead time” between two switching drivers to optimize power system efficiency and safety.

Si827x Highlights include:

• Industry’s highest noise immunity (200 kV/µs) and latch-up immunity (400 kV/µs) to support ultra-fast switching
• The only gate drivers available operating down to 2.5 V VDD to reduce power consumption
• Best-in-class timing specs (typical 30 ns delay) with 10x shorter propagation delay and 20x lower skew than competing gate drivers
• Uses EN pin instead of DIS pin to ensure a safe default state
• Accurate timing including dead-time control to maximize system efficiency and safety
• Robust, reliable solution with stable operation over a long lifetime – up to 60 years or 10x longer than opto-based solutions

Check out the Si827x Evaluation Kit here.